party was favorable to slavery. I flattered myself, vainly perhaps, that I had a fair chance to be one of the first United States Senators from Oregon, but with this address that chance vanished like the pictures of a morning dream. I was unsound on the slavery question."
The address Judge Williams refers to was called by Whigs and Republicans, his "Free State Letter," and by ardent proslavery Democrats, his "Infamous Letter." Concerning it the silent Democrats were still silent. If the Judge ever received any congratulations from them, he has never said, but he got many curses from the enemy. The "Free State Letter" was an able and timely document, and there is no better evidence of its worth as a convincing argument, at that time and under the circumstances, than the malignity with which its author was assailed by the partisans of slavery.[1] The moral tone of the letter was not up to the standard of anti-slavery men from ethical principles, and such were disappointed. Some of them, however, were sagacious enough to see that such a letter would have been inopportune. There w^as no word in that letter belittling the altruistic and moral qualities of human nature, and, forsooth, those in the minority who were governed by them, stood in no need of the Judge's demonstrations. And, as evidently, the rabid advocates of slavery were incorrigible. The Judge had lived long enough to know that the question would be decided by the unsentimental, common-sense people who would look at it from a practical standpoint and with special reference to their own personal interests. And this class, in varying proportion, constitute the great majority of human beings in every country and at all times. It was this preponderating element which the Judge expected to reach and prompt to a thoughtful examination of the practical phases of slavery in this country of mountains and valleys, sequestered and uninhabited nooks and canyons, affording hiding places at all seasons for fugitives from service and thus reducing the profits of cheap slave labor to a negative quantity. The Oregon country is
- ↑ See the reprint of it in the paper next following this article.
